Welcome to Fourth Grade!  We will begin the school year by building a positive learning community where students will learn a variety of new concepts in a caring and equitable learning environment.  Expectations and norms for digital learning and digital citizenship will be established at the beginning of the year.  Portrait of a graduate skills such as communicator, collaborator, ethical and global citizen, creative and critical thinker, goal directed, and resiliency will continue to be a part of our instructional practices to support growth throughout the school year in all content areas.    

In Language Arts, we focus on a variety of reading strategies to help fourth graders excel in reading fiction, non-fiction and poetry. Students will look at multiple points of view to develop theories about the text. Students will set goals and reflect on their progress.  Students in fourth grade begin to become more independent with their reading as we switch from learning to read to reading to learn!  We research certain topics throughout the school year within the Science and Social Studies content. Writing encompasses a significant part of Language Arts from writing a personal essay to a feature article as well as working through the writing process and writing about our reading. We will also support students with word study and vocabulary development as well as learning to converse about their reading.  

Fourth grade students build new mathematical knowledge through problem solving.  Students will be using interactive manipulatives and will be encouraged to be communicators and critical thinkers.  The curriculum will be differentiated for all students and will spiral throughout the school year.  Opportunities will be provided for all students that provide multiple pathways towards a common goal while connecting to a “real world” meaning to content knowledge.    Students will work on place value through the millions, estimation, operation with whole numbers, fraction and decimal number sense, patterns, geometry, and interpreting data.  Problem solving is explored throughout the school year using multi-step math problems.

Virginia history is our focus for Social Studies.  Students will learn about multiple perspectives while using a critical lens to view the lives of the people of the past.  We will explore Virginia's Geography, Virginia’s Native Peoples, Jamestown, Colonial Virginia, Revolutionary War, New Nation, Civil War, Reconstruction, Civil Rights and the 20th Century and Beyond.  Students will also learn about the past events in Fairfax County, today’s people, economy and government.    

Science includes four main units: Virginia Ecosystems, Weather and Beyond, Magnetism and Electricity, and Sciences in the Garden!  As scientists students will often begin their work by asking a question.  Throughout the year students will participate in different scientific investigations.

Fourth grade is jam packed with lots of learning and of course, lots of fun.  This school year we will also be working on developing a growth mindset as well.  Together there are no limits to what we can achieve.  We look forward to an amazing year!